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Quacula
Quacula is an vampire duck rumored to have been created by either Ron Card or Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott. He is a not so terrifying creature of the night who had little luck scarring people half the time, but one victim he could always rely on being spooked by his antics is his 'roommate', Theodore H. Bear. Background In the late 1970's, CBS was interested to producing a new TV series of cartoons with the classic TerryToon characters, so the animation studio Filmation, which had be gaining traction was given the job of bringing the series to life, they already planned on using Mighty Mouse as well as Heckle and Jeckle in the show, however they also wanted a third character, something to help fill up the runtime, and they decided it might as well be a entirely new creation, as such Quacula was created. It isn't documented exactly who was responsible for making him, it could have Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott, the show's producers, it is just as likely that he was created by Ron Card, who by far wrote the most cartoons for the character of any writer. Quacula made his debut on 1979, on the first episode of The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle, ''in the shorts "Star Boars" and "Where There's a Will", (the latter of which had him star alongside Heckle and Jeckle). A Vampire duck with slick back hair similar to that of Dracula, he lived in the basement of a old run down mansion, a mansion which was also owned by a bear named Theodore, who Quacula would sometimes mockingly referred to as 'Teddy', Quacula would always sleep during the day, and by night he wake up and go out to scare as many people as he could, a vampire's way of having fun we suppose, the first person he'd always spook was Theo', and because of this Theo would never get any sleep, in fact the only clothes he ever wore were pajamas. Theo would always try coming up with schemes and plans to get rid of Quacula so he could get some shut eye, however Quacula would always out smart him, and end up frightening him out of his wits. Quacula is not a very clever person, while he has his moments of smart thinking he is very much a goofball, who spends a lot of his time messing stuff up. Another thing is that each cartoon began with him waking up in his coffin (Which just so happens to be shaped like an egg), he'd get stuck inside and use some sort of off the wall method of getting out normally hurting himself in the process, and then at the end of the cartoon he'd see that sunrise was coming and rush back to his egg, it'd usually be stuck shut and Quacula would get it open through another way which mirrors how the cartoon began. Quacula was portrayed by the great Frank Welker, using a scratchy sounding voice, and with a laugh which sounds like a duck quacking, his insomnia stricken rival Theo was voiced by Norm Prescott, who was as stated before hand one of the producers, Theo would always start his sentences with "Ooh! Ooh!", all of the other characters were also played by Frank. Quacula mostly spoke in old English, with the exception of his catchphrase, anytime things weren't going his way he'd always utter the word "Bummer!". Why was 'bummer' of all things his catchphrase? The joke is probably supposed to be that it's the last thing you'd expect a Vampire to say. Quacula's powers included flying, turning into a mist, and stretching out his face into ghastly shapes to scare people. Yes, it seems that even though the theme song for the series stated he never had any luck with that sort of thing, there were many times in which he scarred people besides Theodore, in fact that was how he got out of a lot of situations. While Quacula and Theo had a disliking for each other there were several shorts in which the two had to work together for a common goal, one short had Theo get turned into a monster, and Quacula cured him for no reason other then that he wanted to. The shorts didn't normally feature any reoccurring characters, mostly due to not having the chance given it's short life span (More on that later), however one character who did appear more then once was a Alien who was in "Star Boars" and "Return of Star Boars", he tried to abduct Quacula for testing. Another was Quacula's Uncle Ferenc, a kooky old man whose even worse at his job then his nephew, he appeared in "Uncle Ferenc" and was mentioned in "Morgana La Duck" as the person who gave Quacula his spell book One thing to mention about the segments is that the animation for these shorts were very fluid, fast paced, and well drawn, looking far better than the more stilted offerings that Filmation had before and after this, of course the studio is well known for always repeating animation and Quacula is no different, there were tons of recycled animation through the cartoons, some of the most often used were scenes of Quacula pulling up his sleeve, stretching off to the side to whisper to the audience, facing the camera as he speaks while holding his cape up, talking in a still shot, trying to scare somebody with several masks, and many many more (The Mighty Mouse segments of the show also occasionally had pretty fluid animation, but they reused shots far less). The cartoons were definitely going for a Tex Avery inspired style, it makes sense since many of the animators who worked on these shorts would later work on Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures Lawsuit Quacula would have continued to appear in the series if not for one little problem, cartoonist Scott Shaw had created a vampire duck called Duckula three years earlier for a independent publisher, Star*Reach who appeared in ''Quack! issue #1 in 1976. When he saw Quacula he felt it was a ripoff of his character, and so he filed a lawsuit against Filmationpopculturizm.com: UnderGround Anthropomorphic Comics. The matter was settled out of court, and after 16 solo cartoons and the 1 with heckle and Jeckle, Quackula was dropped from the show. For season 2 the show was shortened from an hour to a half-hour to accommodate said change, and his shorts had to be edited out of rebroadcasts of the earlier episodes. Bummer. That was the last we saw of Quacula in the show, and the last we saw of him at all, his final cartoon was "The Fantastic 2½" Filmography 1979 * Star Boars * Where There's a Will (With Heckle and Jeckle) * House for Sale * Weird Bear * Monster Mash * Uncle Ferenc * The Magic Lamp * Room for Rent * Morgana La Duck * Return of Star Boars * Time and Before (Only cartoon where his egg coffin has handles) * Bungled Burglary * Shanghai Salty * Pyramid * Haunted House * Magic Duck * The Fantastic 2½ (Mighty Mouse makes a cameo on Theo's comic book cover) Legacy Had he and Theodore not been removed from the show it's likely they'd be more well known in pop culture and better remembered today, most modern audiences would ridicule these cartoons for their repeated animation and cheap budgets, there are still those who fondly remember the character. He may be gone, but hey, he ain't forgotten, after all many people have jumped through hoops finding the shorts in English, that's a sign Quacula was doing something right. One thing we have to say is he's always there when things seem Vam-dire. Notes * He wears gloves, but their the same color as the rest of him, making them hard to notice. * He is not to be confused with Count Duckula, another vampire duck who appeared in Danger Mouse before spinning off into his own series, he came after Quacula and Scott Shaw's Duckula. * The writers always got credit, but never the directors. References Category:Characters Category:Birds Category:Animals